This page offers previews of chapter abstracts. Ordering and numbering of chapters are subject to change: Order changed on 20080318 to match General Outline. Chapters with missing or non-standard synopses include: Challenges Confronted & Lessons (Un)Learned; Open Licences of Copyright for Authors, Educators and Librarians; Social Media for Adult Online Learners and Educators.)
Dr. Patricia Delich, Kevin Kelly, and Dr. Don McIntosh
Emerging technologies can have a far reaching effect on how teachers teach and learners learn. The ability to harness these technologies in the design of online classrooms can impact the engagement of teaching and learning by creating more options for learners to connect with course content as well as to other learners. This chapter identifies several emerging technologies, describes how they will impact education, and explores the challenges that could arise due to the nature of current technology adoption models in education.
Dr. Kris Kumar
Emerging technologies are moving the leading economies forward and, at the same time, resulting in new paradigms of enabling the developing world to leapfrog from their current status straight into the forefront of development. If they do not catch up with the fast growing potential technologies, the digital divide may even leave them further behind than ever before! This chapter highlights the important role upcoming instructional technologies can play in Africa, Asia and elsewhere through the innovative use of Internet, Podcasting, Skype communications and desktop audio and video conferencing. Design studios for product design and architectural design need to be more than normal classrooms; they must provide design and drawing and modeling infrastructure, pin up boards, inspirational environment as well as freewheeling. Connected global digital design studios can provide digital equivalent of the traditional studios, thus enabling global interactive and collaborative design more easily and accessibly. The chapter concludes with some further thoughts based upon newer instructional technologies.
Challenges Confronted and Lessons (Un)Learned: Linking Students from the University of Ghana and Kwantlen University College
Dr. Charles Quist-Adade
While Canadian Communications scholar Marshall McLuhan put us all in a “Global Village,” the benefits of the village appear to elude a sizeable number of the villagers as the digital divide between the technology-haves and technology-have-nots has been growing ever wider and wider. Knowledge and ideas flow in a uni-directional, North-to-South (from the Global North to the Global South) fashion with little going in the opposite direction. A lopsided flow of knowledge, values and ideas creates an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and recrimination, with some of the villagers complaining of “cultural imperialism” and others fending off such charges by saying they are only promoting the ideas of “democracy.” But for the cultures of the “Global Village” to flourish in a tolerant, mutually beneficial fashion, it is imperative that there be real sharing of ideas, knowledge, and values. There is no better forum to address the ever-increasing need for mutual understanding and mutual respect across cultures and national borders than via collaborative learning. The British Columbia-Ghana Online Collaborative Learning Project (BCGOCLP) did just that.
Dr. Madhumita Bhattacharya and Maggie Hartnett
The move towards globalization of education will be successful only if we can find the ways and strategies where people could collaborate and integrate to bring “Unity in Diversity”- which is of utmost importance for world peace, sustainability of our rich cultures and progress together towards a better future. To address the emerging challenges and issues towards globalization of education we need instructional systems and supporting technologies which will give considerations to learner characteristics, dynamics of interactions and pedagogical principles for effective learning in a global context. It is not only diversity among people but also tools, technologies and strategies which are constantly changing. This chapter will include the possible ways of instructional and interaction design, modes of delivery and approaches to assessment keeping into consideration the differences among the learners. This chapter will discuss guiding principles to address diversity in a constructive way through analysis of impacts of learning activity system on the learning process.
Ken Banks
This chapter will talk about how mobiles are being used today, in a rather restricted technical space, in mobile learning initiatives in places like Africa, and then look at what will become possible as new and higher-end phones work there way into these markets.
Dr. Mohamed Ally
This chapter provides a brief history of technology in education, outlines the benefits of using emerging technologies in e-learning, provides design guidelines for developing learning materials, describes the support required for these technologies, and discusses future trends in e-learning.
Dr. Don McIntosh with contributions from Kevin Kelly and Randy LaBonte
The Learning Management Systems (LMS) chapter is a non-technical look at the features and capabilities of learning management systems for both corporate training and formal education use. It considers open-source systems as an alternative to commercial proprietary ones. It discusses the processes of needs analysis, selection, and implementation of the systems choices. Case studies are provided for illustration. It also describes technical and development standards and associated software such as course development/authoring tools, Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) and virtual classroom tools.
Julia Hengstler
Hengstler presents an overview of open source and free software with reference to programs of interest to educators. She distinguishes between the Free Software and Open Source Movements, describes why these types of software should be of particular interest to educators, highlights the importance of the General Public Licence, summarizes key challenges to adoption of freely-sourced software, reviews common misperceptions about this software and provides a methodological framework for the potential adoption of such software. Citations include unique personal communications from Free Software Movement founder, Richard M. Stallman.
Niki Lambropoulos
A shift from the Industrial Age to the Information and Collaboration Age is evident in the changes in our lives. E-learning has become accessible to a wider population providing flexible ways to learn but has not reached its potential. This chapter insists upon the importance of ensuring quality in the early stages of e-learning design. The design process must acknowledge the dual persona of the e-learner, as a learner and as a user of a system. This ongoing process is based on three pillars: the identification of a pedagogical focus or an existing problem; the integration of the design phases, (analysis, design, development and use) unified by real-time evaluation; and awareness of the importance attached to e-learning communities in order to enhance collaborative learning, imagination, and co-creativity. Such process provides information and feedback for proactive decision making to support all participants in e-learning. Quality assurance by design helps e-learning to evolve and meet the requirements of the 21st century.
Peter Fenrich
This chapter describes the instructional design process which is defined as a systematic, repetitive process of activities aimed at creating a solution for an instructional problem. It provides details and practical guidelines for completing the process. The instructional design process entails conducting a needs assessment, goal analysis, subordinate skills analysis, and learner analysis. This process also entails writing complete learning outcomes at the highest appropriate level based on a revised Bloom’s taxonomy. The learner will ultimately be able to apply the skills learned in creating effective courses. This content will remain valid in the future in that the instructional design process is based on solid principles supported by years of research.
Natasha Boskic, Nathan Hapke, Kirsten Bole, and Kevin Kelly
Great efforts have been made to give every student equal access to high-quality learning, and to remove barriers for people with disabilities. However, most of these efforts are focused on the traditional, face-to-face classroom experience. Less attention is devoted to those taking courses fully online, and their ability or inability to cope with web-based interactive content. While standards and guidelines have been developed to support and assist with accessible web design, their primary focus has been on technical specifications, assistive technologies, or legal issues. Fewer studies have been conducted to investigate how that "accessible" content is perceived from a learner’s perspective, and how helpful it really is. As distance learning adapts to new technology, instructors should be innovative in their relationship with students and in methods for developing educational content, accommodating the diverse needs and learning styles which will be beneficial for all, regardless of their (dis)abilities.
Finola Finlay
Students are increasingly mobile, moving between post-secondary institutions and carrying their accumulated credits with them in the expectation that they will receive appropriate transfer credit for relevant courses they have taken and be able to apply that credit to fulfill program requirements in the institutions they attend. Online learning has had a significant impact on mobility and transfer: students can and do access high quality courses from all over the world. However, this virtual mobility creates challenges for post-secondary institutions. The articulation agreements used by institution and systems to generate and record transfer credit arrangements have traditionally been negotiated locally and have concerned the assessment of courses offered in the familiar face-to-face classroom environment. Few resources exist that will assist practitioners at sending institutions to ensure the successful articulation of their online courses, and provide evaluators at receiving institutions the tools they need to make confident decisions. This chapter aims to fill that gap.
Sylvia Currie and June Kaminski
Where does the process of planning a course begin? Where does it end? What does a course plan look like, and how does it differ from a course design? This chapter provides an overview of the broad considerations in preparing an online course plan. A plan is a starting point for moving forward with the design, implementation, and evaluation of an online course.
• Who will you work with to design the course?
• Who will take the course and why?
• What do we know about the learners?
• How do instructor styles factor into the planning?
• What are the main components of the course?
• How will the course be organized?
Even the most open-ended learning activities begin with a plan. However, a plan will and should be refined and adjusted during implementation. In this sense a plan evolves, but it continues to provide a sidebar of sorts, or something to guide the decisions about the design work that needs be carried out. A plan can be both an ongoing reality check, and way to focus on important elements of a course design.
Dan O’Reily and Kevin Kelly
This chapter reviews some of the basic issues of evaluation and assessment relevant to both online testing and authentic assessment techniques. While WebCT ver 4.1 is the primary example, the information can be applied to most online platforms used in a lab setting.
The chapter begins by detailing some of the more important security issues for online testing, ones that generally are not covered in most reference material. It looks in detail at some third- party software, namely NetSupport and Excel, for managing computer labs. NetSupport provides a means of monitoring every computer in a lab from one workstation. Excel, through its web query function, provides a means of collecting data from any page in WebCT in order to monitor activity on that page. Detailed examples are provided for both packages. The quiz settings relevant to monitoring a WebCT quiz in a computer lab are discussed in detail. Here, the discussion focuses on WebCT 4.1 and a computer lab environment. The chapter ends by describing other ways to evaluate student performance, such as using rubrics and peer review to evaluate writing assignments submitted electronically, or asking students to submit items within an electronic portfolio.
Dan McGuire
This chapter features an explanation of the ethical and legal requirements that must be met before using copyright material in your online course.
Julien Hofman and Paul West
An open licence, as used in this chapter, is a neutral expression for a licence granted by someone who holds copyright in material allowing anyone to use the material subject to the conditions in the licence but without having to pay a royalty or licence fee.
There are many different open licences, some for computer software and some for other forms of material. Each has its own terms, conditions and vocabulary. This chapter is an introduction to open licence language and to the open licences that are important for authors and educators. It is not legal advice. Individuals or institutions thinking of committing themselves to open licensing should get professional legal advice about the implications of the licences they are considering using.
Dr. Randy LaBonte
Standards exist for many things, from safety standards in the home for construction and manufactured goods to standards of practice for professionals. The systemic implementation of new technologies and delivery of online courses requires adoption of standards and specifications in both the development of e learning content and its delivery through e learning technologies. Standardizing the gauge of a railroad track enabled the locomotive to lay the groundwork for the industrial economy, and in much the same way in today’s information age the internet was born from the standardization of TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML protocols for the World Wide Web. The historical emergence of standards for railway track gauge, as well as telephones, videotape/DVD formats, and HTML, typically started with proprietary technology that did not integrate with other technologies. End-users and consumers of the technology demanded changes that led to interoperability, enabling several products designed to serve common needs to coexist. This convergence of technologies provides the groundwork for the development and description of standards that provide end-users with assurance of longevity and consistency. Given the initial costs for developing e learning programs, establishment of standards for e learning is driven by similar demand for consistency and longevity of use by the end user.
Dr. Randy LaBonte
It is one thing to have innovative technology and preach about its ability to transform and revolutionize learning, it is another to actually make this happen within traditional, structured education and training environments. Sound leadership and change management skills are key to implementing the use of new educational technologies to support e learning programs and foster transformation. While leadership, reform and change management have been well studied and documented in the literature, little has been written about the role leaders play in the success or failure of e learning program design, development and implementation. Traditional theoretical and practical constructs do not adequately reflect emerging e learning environments, yet one theory, transformational leadership theory, does provide insight into fundamental assumptions about change, control, order, organizations, people and leadership in e learning program implementation. Promising research affirms the critical role of leadership in systemic change for e learning design, development and delivery, and confirms that without a clear vision combined with collaborative leadership organizations could end up committing precious resources to the development and deployment of courses for e learning without much success.
Shawn Berney
This chapter focuses on the development of collaborative technologies that underpin a 'community of practice'. The bottom-up approach provides the foundation for greater understanding of these emerging collaborative spaces. Concepts that underpin On-line engagement and evolving digital communication standards are addressed. These concepts provide the basis for examining operational and social processes; including administrative and technological frameworks, as well as leadership techniques. Modeling techniques are then described to show how to integrate foundational concepts with social and operational processes. These modeling techniques encourage interdisciplinary communication and broad engagement in community planning and development.
Peter Fenrich
An instructional strategy describes the instructional materials' components and the procedures used with the materials to have the students achieve the learning outcomes.
This chapter first introduces instructional strategies and discusses strategies for verbal information, intellectual skills, psychomotor skills, and attitudes. The chapter then describes how you should sequence learning outcomes and then how to motivate learners in online courses. Instructional events, the foundation for course design, are then presented. After this a variety of instructional strategies are discussed that can support learners beyond the more common online strategies that are described in other parts of this book. The chapter closes with some comments on developing and selecting instructional materials.
Peter Fenrich
A major part of the instructional design process is selecting the appropriate media mix to effectively teach the learning outcome(s). Selecting the best media mix will enable you to increase learning and maximize cost-effectiveness. Some concepts are extremely difficult to teach without the correct media mix.
This chapter introduces you to the different media categories: text, audio, visuals, video, animations, and real objects. The chapter explains how each medium relates to learning and describes how media can affect a learner's motivation. The strengths and weaknesses of each medium are presented with respect to the different learning outcome classifications, as previously discussed in the General Principles of Instructional Design chapter. This chapter also provides ideas on how to keep the message clear.
Peter Fenrich
This section focuses on the viability of virtually teaching lab, shop, and other practical skills. Topics include how educational technology may support learners, problems with “live” labs, instructional design, controlling real equipment, how lab tests can be handled, articulation, as well as some thoughts on the future of online labs. The instructional design topic will address learning outcomes that focus on important skills, content areas that will be stronger or weaker than traditional labs, and strategies for effectively teaching lab skills online.
Dr. David Kaufman and Dr. Alice Ireland
This chapter gives you a broad introduction to the use of computer-based games for learning. We start with basic terms and move on to look at why these activities can be powerful learning tools, drawing on current learning theory, game research, and recent experience. After presenting examples to spark your own learning-game ideas, we discuss factors that make learning games effective. The chapter closes with tips for successfully getting started using games in your learning context.
Kevin Kelly
"Teaching effectiveness" is a broad term used to describe an instructor's ability to impact student success. It is usually defined according to several factors, such as how well an instructor organizes a course that contains relevant material, how well he or she knows the course material, how clearly he or she communicates with students, how frequently he or she provides timely feedback, and other such criteria. In classroom situations, effectiveness definitions sometimes include the instructor's enthusiasm or disposition. During fully online and blended learning courses, students often need greater amounts of structure and support to succeed because online course activities usually require students to take greater responsibility for their own learning success. Therefore, many of the criteria mentioned above take on even more importance when evaluating online teaching effectiveness.
Richard S. Lavin,Paul A. Beaufait, and Joseph Tomei, with a contribution fromDavid Brear
This chapter combines two sections on relatively new technologies, blogs and wikis, with a third on digital storytelling, to introduce the possibilities of creating sets of many-to-many relations within and between classes, and to encourage educators to take up blogs, wikis, and digital storytelling in their classrooms as a way of returning to a state of "beginner's mind". These tools are not only powerful in and of themselves, but may have even greater potential when used together. The first section on blogs argues that they may be the best all-round tool for computer-mediated communication (CMC), allowing learners and educators alike to build their online identities in a semi-enclosed space from which they can venture out on their own terms to engage with others. The following section on wikis points to possibilities of using these powerful tools for collaboration, suggesting that in many cases wikis work better when learners and educators already have a solid foundation in blogging. This section outlines work that attempts to merge the functions of blogs and wikis, and highlights issues associated with usability and flow. The third section takes up digital storytelling, to walk educators through the process of planning and creating their own stories, and to prepare them to teach their students how to do the same. The process of assembling various media and pieces of information into a story encourages deep learner engagement, and can be a wonderfully effective way to master curricular content, while helping to encourage development of computer literacy. Blogs, wikis, and digital media are but a narrow selection of the tools for online engagement, but we feel they cast a wide enough net to familiarize readers with some of the options that now exist.
Kevin Kelly and Dr. Ruth Cox
This chapter lays a foundation for online teachers to recognize K-12 and postsecondary students' needs to express their ideas and viewpoints, both within and outside the context of their coursework. There is a human at the other end of each web page, discussion thread, chat entry, blog, or wiki contribution. We outline specific strategies to create a safe environment for techno expression, and offer specific examples of how educators can model and encourage this expression through various technological means. We also describe various tools that instructors can use to facilitate the process. This chapter compliments chapters 15, 16 and 17 related to instructor and student engagement by looking at course design, effective online practices, and technological tools that give students opportunities to express themselves.
Paul A. Beaufait, Richard S. Lavin, and Joseph Tomei
In this chapter we explore the notion of collaborative learning from theoretical as well as practical perspectives. Our first step is to distinguish collaborative from cooperative learning, because much so-called collaborative learning, although collective and often cooperative, is not necessarily collaborative. We attempt to clarify what we may be failing to do when attempting to foster collaboration, prior to formulating clearer ideas of what else is possible, and what is transferable to online learning and working environments. With rapid development and expansion of technological infrastructures, possibilities for harnessing technology to enable collaboration are expanding. Yet, as we move to take advantage of these possibilities, we encounter new challenges and discover unexpected complexities in fostering collaborative endeavours online. The chapter concludes with stories and reflections representing online educational collaboration from learners' and educators' perspectives.
Joseph Tomei,Paul A. Beaufait, and Richard S. Lavin, with contributions fromTod Anderson, Kathryn Chang Barker, Karen Barnstable, and Lynn Kirkland Harvey
In this chapter, we suggest that identity is the base from which learners' engagement with content, as well as communication with others, begins. As students establish their identities, they have to negotiate and engage with other students, and in online courses channels for negotiation and engagement are necessarily different from those in traditional classrooms. The power of online classrooms arises not simply out of their time- and space-shifting potentials, but also from the potential for diverse sets of many-to-many relationships as students engage with each other. Many of the lessons that we aim to teach students are not simply to do with mastering course content, but also involve understandings of issues involved in working with others and collaborating towards shared goals. Deliberate appraisals of learners' identities in online environments can help us realize these aims. This position is supported by Tod Anderson's summary of secondary student participation in online learning, a summary which provides a snapshot for technological understanding from a locale that might represent a best-case scenario - or at least a fairly advanced one - in which the technologies in use have to a large extent been adopted from higher education. We note that secondary schools face many of the same issues that tertiary and adult educators began grappling with years ago, and continue to face. These observations provide a springboard into a wide-ranging discussion of online learners' identities, underscoring the necessity for considering learners' identities from the very beginning of online work, rather than just as a concern of secondary and tertiary educators. The chapter concludes with a concrete example of identity construction and a possible end point to online education in the form of Kathryn Chang Barker and Karen Barnstable's discussion of e-portfolios.
Dr. David Kaufman, Kevin Kelly, and Dr. Alice Ireland
This chapter examines the theoretical and practical aspects of ‘community of practice’ (CoP). It presents a practical guide to developing and maintaining your own CoP. It also provides an overview of the conceptual foundations of CoPs. Case studies throughout the chapter describe the conception, growth, challenges and triumphs of several CoPs in action.
Dr. Susan Crichtonand Dr. Elizabeth Childs
Much of the contemporary literature about online and/or blended learning casts it as innovative, and talk abounds about leading edge technologies supporting teaching and learning opportunities for K-12 education, postsecondary education, and corporate training. Typically, both are about flexible access and increased learning opportunities.
In the K-12 or post-secondary educational environment, these learning options enable students to complete work that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. Initially, this audience included students with an extended illness or disability who were now able to complete course work that otherwise they would miss or be required to take again or rural students who were unable to have access to courses required for post-secondary entrance etc. Increasingly, this audience has expanded to include any student who is working toward their personal learning goals and needs access to courses and/or content at their pace and in their timeframe.
Table of Contents
Part 1: The Impact of Instructional Technologies
Emerging Technologies in e-Learning
Dr. Patricia Delich, Kevin Kelly, and Dr. Don McIntoshEmerging technologies can have a far reaching effect on how teachers teach and learners learn. The ability to harness these technologies in the design of online classrooms can impact the engagement of teaching and learning by creating more options for learners to connect with course content as well as to other learners. This chapter identifies several emerging technologies, describes how they will impact education, and explores the challenges that could arise due to the nature of current technology adoption models in education.
Virtual Design Studios : Solving Learning Problems in Developing Countries
Dr. Kris KumarEmerging technologies are moving the leading economies forward and, at the same time, resulting in new paradigms of enabling the developing world to leapfrog from their current status straight into the forefront of development. If they do not catch up with the fast growing potential technologies, the digital divide may even leave them further behind than ever before! This chapter highlights the important role upcoming instructional technologies can play in Africa, Asia and elsewhere through the innovative use of Internet, Podcasting, Skype communications and desktop audio and video conferencing. Design studios for product design and architectural design need to be more than normal classrooms; they must provide design and drawing and modeling infrastructure, pin up boards, inspirational environment as well as freewheeling. Connected global digital design studios can provide digital equivalent of the traditional studios, thus enabling global interactive and collaborative design more easily and accessibly. The chapter concludes with some further thoughts based upon newer instructional technologies.
Challenges Confronted and Lessons (Un)Learned: Linking Students from the University of Ghana and Kwantlen University College
Dr. Charles Quist-AdadeWhile Canadian Communications scholar Marshall McLuhan put us all in a “Global Village,” the benefits of the village appear to elude a sizeable number of the villagers as the digital divide between the technology-haves and technology-have-nots has been growing ever wider and wider. Knowledge and ideas flow in a uni-directional, North-to-South (from the Global North to the Global South) fashion with little going in the opposite direction. A lopsided flow of knowledge, values and ideas creates an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and recrimination, with some of the villagers complaining of “cultural imperialism” and others fending off such charges by saying they are only promoting the ideas of “democracy.” But for the cultures of the “Global Village” to flourish in a tolerant, mutually beneficial fashion, it is imperative that there be real sharing of ideas, knowledge, and values. There is no better forum to address the ever-increasing need for mutual understanding and mutual respect across cultures and national borders than via collaborative learning. The British Columbia-Ghana Online Collaborative Learning Project (BCGOCLP) did just that.
Addressing Diversity
Dr. Madhumita Bhattacharya and Maggie HartnettThe move towards globalization of education will be successful only if we can find the ways and strategies where people could collaborate and integrate to bring “Unity in Diversity”- which is of utmost importance for world peace, sustainability of our rich cultures and progress together towards a better future. To address the emerging challenges and issues towards globalization of education we need instructional systems and supporting technologies which will give considerations to learner characteristics, dynamics of interactions and pedagogical principles for effective learning in a global context. It is not only diversity among people but also tools, technologies and strategies which are constantly changing. This chapter will include the possible ways of instructional and interaction design, modes of delivery and approaches to assessment keeping into consideration the differences among the learners. This chapter will discuss guiding principles to address diversity in a constructive way through analysis of impacts of learning activity system on the learning process.
Mobile Learning in Developing Countries : Present Realities and Future Possibilities
Ken BanksThis chapter will talk about how mobiles are being used today, in a rather restricted technical space, in mobile learning initiatives in places like Africa, and then look at what will become possible as new and higher-end phones work there way into these markets.
The Impact of Technology on Education
Dr. Mohamed AllyThis chapter provides a brief history of technology in education, outlines the benefits of using emerging technologies in e-learning, provides design guidelines for developing learning materials, describes the support required for these technologies, and discusses future trends in e-learning.
Part 2: Creating Online Courses
Learning Management Systems : Commercial
Dr. Don McIntosh with contributions from Kevin Kelly and Randy LaBonteThe Learning Management Systems (LMS) chapter is a non-technical look at the features and capabilities of learning management systems for both corporate training and formal education use. It considers open-source systems as an alternative to commercial proprietary ones. It discusses the processes of needs analysis, selection, and implementation of the systems choices. Case studies are provided for illustration. It also describes technical and development standards and associated software such as course development/authoring tools, Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) and virtual classroom tools.
Exploring Open Source and Free Software:We're Not in Kansas Anymore
Julia HengstlerHengstler presents an overview of open source and free software with reference to programs of interest to educators. She distinguishes between the Free Software and Open Source Movements, describes why these types of software should be of particular interest to educators, highlights the importance of the General Public Licence, summarizes key challenges to adoption of freely-sourced software, reviews common misperceptions about this software and provides a methodological framework for the potential adoption of such software. Citations include unique personal communications from Free Software Movement founder, Richard M. Stallman.
Quality Assurance by Design
Niki LambropoulosA shift from the Industrial Age to the Information and Collaboration Age is evident in the changes in our lives. E-learning has become accessible to a wider population providing flexible ways to learn but has not reached its potential. This chapter insists upon the importance of ensuring quality in the early stages of e-learning design. The design process must acknowledge the dual persona of the e-learner, as a learner and as a user of a system. This ongoing process is based on three pillars: the identification of a pedagogical focus or an existing problem; the integration of the design phases, (analysis, design, development and use) unified by real-time evaluation; and awareness of the importance attached to e-learning communities in order to enhance collaborative learning, imagination, and co-creativity. Such process provides information and feedback for proactive decision making to support all participants in e-learning. Quality assurance by design helps e-learning to evolve and meet the requirements of the 21st century.
General Principles of Online Instructional Design
Peter FenrichThis chapter describes the instructional design process which is defined as a systematic, repetitive process of activities aimed at creating a solution for an instructional problem. It provides details and practical guidelines for completing the process. The instructional design process entails conducting a needs assessment, goal analysis, subordinate skills analysis, and learner analysis. This process also entails writing complete learning outcomes at the highest appropriate level based on a revised Bloom’s taxonomy. The learner will ultimately be able to apply the skills learned in creating effective courses. This content will remain valid in the future in that the instructional design process is based on solid principles supported by years of research.
Accessibility and Universal Design
Natasha Boskic, Nathan Hapke, Kirsten Bole, and Kevin KellyGreat efforts have been made to give every student equal access to high-quality learning, and to remove barriers for people with disabilities. However, most of these efforts are focused on the traditional, face-to-face classroom experience. Less attention is devoted to those taking courses fully online, and their ability or inability to cope with web-based interactive content. While standards and guidelines have been developed to support and assist with accessible web design, their primary focus has been on technical specifications, assistive technologies, or legal issues. Fewer studies have been conducted to investigate how that "accessible" content is perceived from a learner’s perspective, and how helpful it really is. As distance learning adapts to new technology, instructors should be innovative in their relationship with students and in methods for developing educational content, accommodating the diverse needs and learning styles which will be beneficial for all, regardless of their (dis)abilities.
Articulation and Transfer of Online Courses
Finola FinlayStudents are increasingly mobile, moving between post-secondary institutions and carrying their accumulated credits with them in the expectation that they will receive appropriate transfer credit for relevant courses they have taken and be able to apply that credit to fulfill program requirements in the institutions they attend. Online learning has had a significant impact on mobility and transfer: students can and do access high quality courses from all over the world. However, this virtual mobility creates challenges for post-secondary institutions. The articulation agreements used by institution and systems to generate and record transfer credit arrangements have traditionally been negotiated locally and have concerned the assessment of courses offered in the familiar face-to-face classroom environment. Few resources exist that will assist practitioners at sending institutions to ensure the successful articulation of their online courses, and provide evaluators at receiving institutions the tools they need to make confident decisions. This chapter aims to fill that gap.
Planning Your Online Course
Sylvia Currie and June KaminskiWhere does the process of planning a course begin? Where does it end? What does a course plan look like, and how does it differ from a course design? This chapter provides an overview of the broad considerations in preparing an online course plan. A plan is a starting point for moving forward with the design, implementation, and evaluation of an online course.
• Who will you work with to design the course?
• Who will take the course and why?
• What do we know about the learners?
• How do instructor styles factor into the planning?
• What are the main components of the course?
• How will the course be organized?
Even the most open-ended learning activities begin with a plan. However, a plan will and should be refined and adjusted during implementation. In this sense a plan evolves, but it continues to provide a sidebar of sorts, or something to guide the decisions about the design work that needs be carried out. A plan can be both an ongoing reality check, and way to focus on important elements of a course design.
Assessment and Evaluation
Dan O’Reily and Kevin KellyThis chapter reviews some of the basic issues of evaluation and assessment relevant to both online testing and authentic assessment techniques. While WebCT ver 4.1 is the primary example, the information can be applied to most online platforms used in a lab setting.
The chapter begins by detailing some of the more important security issues for online testing, ones that generally are not covered in most reference material. It looks in detail at some third- party software, namely NetSupport and Excel, for managing computer labs. NetSupport provides a means of monitoring every computer in a lab from one workstation. Excel, through its web query function, provides a means of collecting data from any page in WebCT in order to monitor activity on that page. Detailed examples are provided for both packages. The quiz settings relevant to monitoring a WebCT quiz in a computer lab are discussed in detail. Here, the discussion focuses on WebCT 4.1 and a computer lab environment. The chapter ends by describing other ways to evaluate student performance, such as using rubrics and peer review to evaluate writing assignments submitted electronically, or asking students to submit items within an electronic portfolio.
Part 3: Implementing Technology
Understanding Copyright : Knowing Your Rights and Knowing When You’re Right
Dan McGuireThis chapter features an explanation of the ethical and legal requirements that must be met before using copyright material in your online course.
Open Licences of Copyright for Authors, Educators and Librarians
Julien Hofman and Paul WestAn open licence, as used in this chapter, is a neutral expression for a licence granted by someone who holds copyright in material allowing anyone to use the material subject to the conditions in the licence but without having to pay a royalty or licence fee.
There are many different open licences, some for computer software and some for other forms of material. Each has its own terms, conditions and vocabulary. This chapter is an introduction to open licence language and to the open licences that are important for authors and educators. It is not legal advice. Individuals or institutions thinking of committing themselves to open licensing should get professional legal advice about the implications of the licences they are considering using.
E-Learning Standards
Dr. Randy LaBonteStandards exist for many things, from safety standards in the home for construction and manufactured goods to standards of practice for professionals. The systemic implementation of new technologies and delivery of online courses requires adoption of standards and specifications in both the development of e learning content and its delivery through e learning technologies. Standardizing the gauge of a railroad track enabled the locomotive to lay the groundwork for the industrial economy, and in much the same way in today’s information age the internet was born from the standardization of TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML protocols for the World Wide Web. The historical emergence of standards for railway track gauge, as well as telephones, videotape/DVD formats, and HTML, typically started with proprietary technology that did not integrate with other technologies. End-users and consumers of the technology demanded changes that led to interoperability, enabling several products designed to serve common needs to coexist. This convergence of technologies provides the groundwork for the development and description of standards that provide end-users with assurance of longevity and consistency. Given the initial costs for developing e learning programs, establishment of standards for e learning is driven by similar demand for consistency and longevity of use by the end user.
Leadership and e-Learning : Change Processes for Implementing Educational Technologies
Dr. Randy LaBonteIt is one thing to have innovative technology and preach about its ability to transform and revolutionize learning, it is another to actually make this happen within traditional, structured education and training environments. Sound leadership and change management skills are key to implementing the use of new educational technologies to support e learning programs and foster transformation. While leadership, reform and change management have been well studied and documented in the literature, little has been written about the role leaders play in the success or failure of e learning program design, development and implementation. Traditional theoretical and practical constructs do not adequately reflect emerging e learning environments, yet one theory, transformational leadership theory, does provide insight into fundamental assumptions about change, control, order, organizations, people and leadership in e learning program implementation. Promising research affirms the critical role of leadership in systemic change for e learning design, development and delivery, and confirms that without a clear vision combined with collaborative leadership organizations could end up committing precious resources to the development and deployment of courses for e learning without much success.
Building Communities of Practice
Shawn BerneyThis chapter focuses on the development of collaborative technologies that underpin a 'community of practice'. The bottom-up approach provides the foundation for greater understanding of these emerging collaborative spaces. Concepts that underpin On-line engagement and evolving digital communication standards are addressed. These concepts provide the basis for examining operational and social processes; including administrative and technological frameworks, as well as leadership techniques. Modeling techniques are then described to show how to integrate foundational concepts with social and operational processes. These modeling techniques encourage interdisciplinary communication and broad engagement in community planning and development.
Part 4: e-Learning in Action
Instructional Strategy
Peter FenrichAn instructional strategy describes the instructional materials' components and the procedures used with the materials to have the students achieve the learning outcomes.
This chapter first introduces instructional strategies and discusses strategies for verbal information, intellectual skills, psychomotor skills, and attitudes. The chapter then describes how you should sequence learning outcomes and then how to motivate learners in online courses. Instructional events, the foundation for course design, are then presented. After this a variety of instructional strategies are discussed that can support learners beyond the more common online strategies that are described in other parts of this book. The chapter closes with some comments on developing and selecting instructional materials.
Media Selection
Peter FenrichA major part of the instructional design process is selecting the appropriate media mix to effectively teach the learning outcome(s). Selecting the best media mix will enable you to increase learning and maximize cost-effectiveness. Some concepts are extremely difficult to teach without the correct media mix.
This chapter introduces you to the different media categories: text, audio, visuals, video, animations, and real objects. The chapter explains how each medium relates to learning and describes how media can affect a learner's motivation. The strengths and weaknesses of each medium are presented with respect to the different learning outcome classifications, as previously discussed in the General Principles of Instructional Design chapter. This chapter also provides ideas on how to keep the message clear.
Computer Based Resources for Learning
Peter FenrichThis section focuses on the viability of virtually teaching lab, shop, and other practical skills. Topics include how educational technology may support learners, problems with “live” labs, instructional design, controlling real equipment, how lab tests can be handled, articulation, as well as some thoughts on the future of online labs. The instructional design topic will address learning outcomes that focus on important skills, content areas that will be stronger or weaker than traditional labs, and strategies for effectively teaching lab skills online.
Computer Based Games for Learning
Dr. David Kaufman and Dr. Alice IrelandThis chapter gives you a broad introduction to the use of computer-based games for learning. We start with basic terms and move on to look at why these activities can be powerful learning tools, drawing on current learning theory, game research, and recent experience. After presenting examples to spark your own learning-game ideas, we discuss factors that make learning games effective. The chapter closes with tips for successfully getting started using games in your learning context.
Evaluating and Improving Online Teaching Effectiveness
Kevin Kelly"Teaching effectiveness" is a broad term used to describe an instructor's ability to impact student success. It is usually defined according to several factors, such as how well an instructor organizes a course that contains relevant material, how well he or she knows the course material, how clearly he or she communicates with students, how frequently he or she provides timely feedback, and other such criteria. In classroom situations, effectiveness definitions sometimes include the instructor's enthusiasm or disposition. During fully online and blended learning courses, students often need greater amounts of structure and support to succeed because online course activities usually require students to take greater responsibility for their own learning success. Therefore, many of the criteria mentioned above take on even more importance when evaluating online teaching effectiveness.
Part 5: Engagement and Communication
Tools for Online Engagement and Communication
Richard S. Lavin, Paul A. Beaufait, and Joseph Tomei, with a contribution from David BrearThis chapter combines two sections on relatively new technologies, blogs and wikis, with a third on digital storytelling, to introduce the possibilities of creating sets of many-to-many relations within and between classes, and to encourage educators to take up blogs, wikis, and digital storytelling in their classrooms as a way of returning to a state of "beginner's mind". These tools are not only powerful in and of themselves, but may have even greater potential when used together. The first section on blogs argues that they may be the best all-round tool for computer-mediated communication (CMC), allowing learners and educators alike to build their online identities in a semi-enclosed space from which they can venture out on their own terms to engage with others. The following section on wikis points to possibilities of using these powerful tools for collaboration, suggesting that in many cases wikis work better when learners and educators already have a solid foundation in blogging. This section outlines work that attempts to merge the functions of blogs and wikis, and highlights issues associated with usability and flow. The third section takes up digital storytelling, to walk educators through the process of planning and creating their own stories, and to prepare them to teach their students how to do the same. The process of assembling various media and pieces of information into a story encourages deep learner engagement, and can be a wonderfully effective way to master curricular content, while helping to encourage development of computer literacy. Blogs, wikis, and digital media are but a narrow selection of the tools for online engagement, but we feel they cast a wide enough net to familiarize readers with some of the options that now exist.
Techno Expression
Kevin Kelly and Dr. Ruth CoxThis chapter lays a foundation for online teachers to recognize K-12 and postsecondary students' needs to express their ideas and viewpoints, both within and outside the context of their coursework. There is a human at the other end of each web page, discussion thread, chat entry, blog, or wiki contribution. We outline specific strategies to create a safe environment for techno expression, and offer specific examples of how educators can model and encourage this expression through various technological means. We also describe various tools that instructors can use to facilitate the process. This chapter compliments chapters 15, 16 and 17 related to instructor and student engagement by looking at course design, effective online practices, and technological tools that give students opportunities to express themselves.
Social Media for Adult Online Learners and Educators
Moira HunterOnline Collaboration
Paul A. Beaufait, Richard S. Lavin, and Joseph TomeiIn this chapter we explore the notion of collaborative learning from theoretical as well as practical perspectives. Our first step is to distinguish collaborative from cooperative learning, because much so-called collaborative learning, although collective and often cooperative, is not necessarily collaborative. We attempt to clarify what we may be failing to do when attempting to foster collaboration, prior to formulating clearer ideas of what else is possible, and what is transferable to online learning and working environments. With rapid development and expansion of technological infrastructures, possibilities for harnessing technology to enable collaboration are expanding. Yet, as we move to take advantage of these possibilities, we encounter new challenges and discover unexpected complexities in fostering collaborative endeavours online. The chapter concludes with stories and reflections representing online educational collaboration from learners' and educators' perspectives.
Identity in Online Education
Joseph Tomei, Paul A. Beaufait, and Richard S. Lavin, with contributions from Tod Anderson, Kathryn Chang Barker, Karen Barnstable, and Lynn Kirkland HarveyIn this chapter, we suggest that identity is the base from which learners' engagement with content, as well as communication with others, begins. As students establish their identities, they have to negotiate and engage with other students, and in online courses channels for negotiation and engagement are necessarily different from those in traditional classrooms. The power of online classrooms arises not simply out of their time- and space-shifting potentials, but also from the potential for diverse sets of many-to-many relationships as students engage with each other. Many of the lessons that we aim to teach students are not simply to do with mastering course content, but also involve understandings of issues involved in working with others and collaborating towards shared goals. Deliberate appraisals of learners' identities in online environments can help us realize these aims. This position is supported by Tod Anderson's summary of secondary student participation in online learning, a summary which provides a snapshot for technological understanding from a locale that might represent a best-case scenario - or at least a fairly advanced one - in which the technologies in use have to a large extent been adopted from higher education. We note that secondary schools face many of the same issues that tertiary and adult educators began grappling with years ago, and continue to face. These observations provide a springboard into a wide-ranging discussion of online learners' identities, underscoring the necessity for considering learners' identities from the very beginning of online work, rather than just as a concern of secondary and tertiary educators. The chapter concludes with a concrete example of identity construction and a possible end point to online education in the form of Kathryn Chang Barker and Karen Barnstable's discussion of e-portfolios.
Supporting Learning Through Communities of Practice
Dr. David Kaufman, Kevin Kelly, and Dr. Alice IrelandThis chapter examines the theoretical and practical aspects of ‘community of practice’ (CoP). It presents a practical guide to developing and maintaining your own CoP. It also provides an overview of the conceptual foundations of CoPs. Case studies throughout the chapter describe the conception, growth, challenges and triumphs of several CoPs in action.
Looking Forward : Stories of Practice
Dr. Susan Crichton and Dr. Elizabeth ChildsMuch of the contemporary literature about online and/or blended learning casts it as innovative, and talk abounds about leading edge technologies supporting teaching and learning opportunities for K-12 education, postsecondary education, and corporate training. Typically, both are about flexible access and increased learning opportunities.
In the K-12 or post-secondary educational environment, these learning options enable students to complete work that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. Initially, this audience included students with an extended illness or disability who were now able to complete course work that otherwise they would miss or be required to take again or rural students who were unable to have access to courses required for post-secondary entrance etc. Increasingly, this audience has expanded to include any student who is working toward their personal learning goals and needs access to courses and/or content at their pace and in their timeframe.